Sevilla in January Day 4 Casa de Pilatos Palacio de las Duenas Hospital los Venerables

 Monday is the big day, well, the big afternoon for visiting Palacios and Patios, but Andrea has a temperature and decides to stay in bed. In the morning I do some shopping at the nearest Mas supermercado. It seems wise to stock up on essentials in case I get ‘it’ too and rain is forecast in the afternoon. After lunch, at 2 o’clock, it’s a 2 minute walk to Casa de Pilatos, where some people are already queuing. Luckily it’s possible to queue in the entrance, protected from what has now become torrential rain. Because of the getting in out of the rain factor, no joke since it is now ricocheting off stones and hence raining upwards, there’s some tolerated queue jumping. 

Casa de Pilatos is free on a Monday afternoon for EU citizens but you must queue personally. You can’t book online. 100 people are allowed in at 15:00, one hundred at 4pm, one hundred and 5pm. That’s how it is, so don’t waste time objecting, however logical your objections may be. If you’re not happy with the free entry conditions, you can pay to go in when you want. I’m fairly near the head of the queue and end up nearer as people squash into to keep dry. We’re allowed in a little before 3 o’clock.

The Patio is absolutely superb, in all senses. I’m bereft without my photographer but I do my best, so I’ll let my photos do the talking. 

It’s well worth waiting for an hour to visit it free, because Casa de Pilatos is, essentially, that Patio. The rooms off it are all very dark with no lighting. Maybe the rainy day doesn’t help but I’m curious if paying visitors get the lights put on for them. I go round the whole area twice, look up, look down, take photos, go into the gardens (only one isn’t cordoned off), take my time to take more photos because visitors are leaving and so it’s easier, but I’m still back at ‘home’ to see how Andrea is by just after 3.30.

To visit Palacio de las Duenas free on a Monday afternoon you have to book tickets on the website. This was easy to do and there was just a one euro booking charge per person. I approve of this since it hopefully stops people just booking for the sake of it. It all seems very organized but when I arrive at 15.59 there’s a long queue of umbrella-ed people waiting to get in, mostly Spanish. Everybody pushes forward and since it is still raining, umbrellas drip onto other people’s jackets and heads making the whole procedure damp and undignified. 

Inside, the situation is better. As I may have mentioned, it’s raining quite heavily, so the pretty patios and gardens of Palacio de las Duenas are soggy and muddy, with a few puddles up to ankle height. Most of the queue has skipped them and gone inside, which makes ‘inside’ crowded, so I go round the gardens all the same, admiring the trees as well and looking in through the windows. Once there are fewer people I go to the main patio, which is very pretty, I’ll leave you to look at the photos rather than describing it.

Differently from Casa de Pilatos, the rooms surrounding the patio are all furnished. I’ve just complained that those of Casa de Pilatos were empty and gloomy so it wouldn’t be logical to complain about these furnished rooms, so I won’t. But I do wonder if the elaborate furnishings and ornaments detract the attention from the andaluz-mudejar architecture which I find so fascinating. Nevertheless, there are a few nice paintings, including a Carracci, and some of the furniture is beautiful.

Once again, I explore slowly and take some photos and double back a couple of times in case I missed something, and the relaxed visit takes me about an hour. It’s still drizzling when I come out, so I go back to the apartment to check on Andrea. 

My next appointment is at Hospital de los Venerables for 6pm. When I leave the apartment, I make my second miscalculation of the holiday so far (the first was not insisting we both wore face masks on the Avant train from Madrid to Sevilla). It’s raining much more heavily now, and I plan the shortest route through the historical centre. This is a stupid idea. First of all, I haven’t been in that general direction since we came to Sevilla in 2013 so my internal compass is skewiff. I have to stop more than once to check where I am and where to go, not easy while managing my umbrella and trying to keep my smart phone dry. Second and more important, the streets are very narrow and most of the houses haven’t got gutters, so there is a deluge of water on both sides which is difficult to avoid. 

By the time I get to Hospital de los Venerables (at which point I realize my compass knew where it was on its own if I hadn’t been a little rattled) I’m reasonably drenched. Never mind, I’m punctual and, not surprisingly, there is no queue. I booked online, nothing to pay for making the reservation either. The best thing about Hospital de los venerables is the patio. Despite lacking the elaborate sculpture decorations of Casa de Pilatos and Palacio de las Duenas, it really ‘works’, spectacular even in the rain nearly at dusk. Worth a twenty-minute walk and getting wet, absolutely.

I give a perfunctory look at the the rest, unwilling to miss anything now I’ve got here, but aware of my squelchy feet and damp right arm where the umbrella dripped from the middle. The church is a triumph of Baroque, but since most of the lights are off (free hours? too few people? always like that?), I can’t see much of it and Baroque isn’t my favourite. I nearly slip over investigating another courtyard and then go upstairs. A room of contemporary art which doesn’t take long and then the Velazquez room which contains maybe ten paintings. We saw a lot of Velazquez when we visited the Prado and I’m no expert but these don’t seem to be among his best. However, there’s one of the monks by Zubaran we saw at El Prado and a nice Crucifixion by El Greco. Nice if you’re short on paintings but probably not if you’ve just been to Madrid. 

More photos of the patio and I’m out in about 20 minutes. This time my brain has caught up, I leave my smart phone in my pocket and take the path along the walls which comes out at Jardines de Murillo and from there along the main road. It’s still raining heavily, but nothing somebody born in the UK finds alarming. I stop at the supermarket for orange juice and then squelch home, grateful for the hot air conditioning which will dry me out.